Onodera Shigemichi (小野寺茂道, died in or after 1601) was a

samurai were the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of medieval and early-modern Japan from the late 12th century until their abolition in 1876. They were the well-paid retainers of the '' daimyo'' (the great feudal landholders). They h ...

commander, keeper of Nishimonai Castle and half-brother of the regional lord (

daimyō were powerful Japanese magnates, feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast, hereditary land holdings. They were subordinate to the shogun and nominal ...

) Onodera Yoshimichi. Famous for his

last stand A last stand is a military situation in which a body of troops holds a defensive position in the face of overwhelming and virtually insurmountable odds. Troops may make a last stand due to a sense of duty; because they are defending a tactic ...

against the

Mogami clan were Japanese '' daimyōs'', and were a branch of the Ashikaga family. In the Sengoku period, they were the Sengoku ''daimyōs'' who ruled Dewa Province which is now Yamagata Prefecture and part of Akita Prefecture. The Mogami clan is deriv ...

, Shigemichi is still honored in Nishimonai as part of an annual bon dance.

Biography

Service to his family

Shigemichi was born sometime before 1566 as the illegitimate son of Onodera Terumichi, the head of the Onodera clan and daimyō of a relatively small domain in

Dewa Province was a province of Japan comprising modern-day Yamagata Prefecture and Akita Prefecture, except for the city of Kazuno and the town of Kosaka. Dewa bordered on Mutsu and Echigō Provinces. Its abbreviated form name was . History Early per ...

, specifically the part that later became southern Akita Prefecture. Though the Onodera clan was deeply entrenched in its territory and had an experienced and loyal army, it was constantly beset by more powerful rival families, most importantly the

, that wanted to take control of the Onodera lands. Thus growing up in a time of constant warfare, Shigemichi went on to serve as samurai for his family and fought in many battles, earning a martial reputation. After his father's death, Shigemichi did not succeed him as daimyō due to his illegitimacy. Instead, his younger brother Onodera Yoshimichi became the next family head, and Shigemichi loyally served him. He was appointed the keeper of Nishimonai Castle, which was a strategically significant and highly contested stronghold that controlled the Onodera clan's southern holdings. Even though the Onodera had managed to defeat or at least stall numerous invasions by outsiders over time, their position finally became untenable in 1600. In the war for the control over Japan between the forces loyal to

Tokugawa Ieyasu was the founder and first ''shōgun'' of the Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan, which ruled Japan from 1603 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. He was one of the three "Great Unifiers" of Japan, along with his former lord Oda Nobunaga and fello ...

and

Toyotomi Hideyori was the son and designated successor of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the general who first united all of Japan. His mother, Yodo-dono, was the niece of Oda Nobunaga. Early life Born in 1593, he was Hideyoshi's second son. The birth of Hideyori cr ...

, Onodera Yoshimichi had chosen to side with the latter. The other lords in the Akita region instead pledged allegiance to the Tokugawa cause. Toyotomi Hideyori's followers were decisively defeated at

Sekigahara The Battle of Sekigahara (Shinjitai: ; Kyūjitai: , Hepburn romanization: ''Sekigahara no Tatakai'') was a decisive battle on October 21, 1600 (Keichō 5, 15th day of the 9th month) in what is now Gifu prefecture, Japan, at the end of ...

, but Yoshimichi refused to give up. This provided the Mogami, who had sided with Tokugawa Ieyasu, with the chance to subjugate the now isolated Onodera. They invaded with a large army in late 1600 and quickly overran the Onodera, forcing Yoshimichi to surrender, whereupon he was exiled.

Last stand at Nishimonai and legacy

At this point, all Onodera resistance in Akita was effectively broken – with the notable exception of Shigemichi, who still held Nishimonai. Upon hearing of his brother's defeat, he refused to surrender and abandon his position. When the Mogami army thus arrived at Nishimonai Castle in early 1601, two months after Yoshimichi's surrender and exile, they found it barred against them and held by Shigemichi's defiant followers. The Mogami under general Sakenobe Norikatsu promptly launched an assault, during which sixty of their samurai and numerous Onodera soldiers were killed. As the castle was about to fall, Shigemichi set fire to it. His fate after this point is disputed; according to some accounts, he perished in the flames of his castle, while others report that he managed to escape to Shōnai, where he died. In either case, when his surviving followers in the area around Nishimonai learned of his death, they decided to do "an unusual thing in his memory; they danced". In this way, they wanted to honor their dead commander and appease his spirit. The

bon dance or just is fusion of the ancient Japanese belief in ancestral spirits and a Japanese Buddhist custom to honor the spirits of one's ancestors. This Buddhist–Confucian custom has evolved into a family reunion holiday during which people retu ...

for Onodera Shigemichi became a local tradition, expanded in its scope, and eventually merged with another regional dance that was performed annually to pray for a good harvest. In this latest incarnation, the dance is still performed every year to this day.

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